Category: Archive

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I haven’t done a snippet of the novella, The Fire Within, for quite a while, so I thought I’d share a little dream sequence. Dreams aren’t just simple sleepy-time visions in this world, as you will see. Darius is the High King of Shanhasson, the throne stolen from the legitimate blood line through murder and treachery. His sister, Eleni, talked him into letting her travel to Keldar to seek allies, where she plans to escape. War approaches Shanhasson, and Darius is desperate enough for more troops that he allows Eleni to flee. She’s never far from his influence, not when he can walk in her dreams with his dark power. She seeks sanctuary with Zahak and/or his brother, the leader of his tribe.

She walked on blood-red sands swept across a blasted land riddled with ravines. A full moon blazed down in the velvet sky, lighting the strange landscape. Ahead, a twisted black Spire pierced the sky. She wanted to run as far away from that Spire as possible, but it sucked her ever closer, her feet heavy and dragging through the sand.

Something in her blood stirred at the sight of that dull-black rock, like worms wriggling in a corpse.

At that thought, Darius appeared, walking across the cracked ground as though he were emperor of the world. She waited for the familiar flood of adrenaline, the rushing of blood in her ears, the vicious clenching of her stomach. Yet all she felt was a spreading warmth in her veins.

Tea. Fire Tea.

Keldar is a hard land.

She remembered Zahak, the feel of his arms sliding around her as she fell. The raw silk scent of his skin, dust and spice and sweat and man. He

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Krista asked about my “had” hatred and what that entailed.

About 3 years ago or so, I stumbled across something Miss Snark said about hating “hads.” I believe it was one of her Crap-o-Meters and how she hated all of the “backstory” up front, but somehow that hatred of poor “had” lodged into my brain and didn’t want to come out. I stripped nearly all the past perfect verb tenses out of my writing. Even though I knew it technically wasn’t the right tense, it was something my brain started doing as I wrote (not something I edited out later).

Now, I’m trying to break that habit and write any little introspection of the past or mini-flash-back of past history in the correct past perfect tense FIRST so I don’t have to go back through and add all those pesky hads. It’s been an amazingly hard bad habit to break.

For example, this is a little snippet from Beautiful Death before I fixed it:

As if it were yesterday, she saw her sister slung over an alien

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I’m feeling a bit scatter-brained this month, this week. The revisions to Letters still aren’t finished. I’ve written about 5K on Gregar’s book, which is good, but not as much as I wanted. Now I’m switching gears entirely to prep Beautiful Death for editor revisions.

Why? Well, you see, I had this small hatred of “had” for a long time, which Deena has patiently pointed out to me through the past 3 books. BD was written back in 2005/2006, so to say that I’ve learned a thing or two in the past years is an understatement. No sense in the editor wasting a ton of time fixing something I already know needs to be fixed.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Beautiful Death after being gone from it so long. It’s my rebellion child. It dragged me kicking and screaming to Olympus, just as Isabella and Hades both were betrayed and taken to face Zeus in the end. I had to get MAD to finish it. Mad at myself, mad at the world. In the end, I loved this book, because it helped me finish. If I hadn’t finished… If I’d quit a book again…

I really don’t know that I’d be here now.

So in many ways, BD saved me as a writer. It was my answer in the darkest moment of my journey to-date. So far, revising it has been like seeing an old acquaintance to whom a great debt is owed, and I’m feeling a little awkward and unsure how I can help it when it helped me so much. I’m starting with those “hads.” We’ll see what else needs gentle smoothing.

We had a horrid personal squick day yesterday with Littlest Monster. Let me just say that I’m still washing everything in the house and I seriously contemplated dragging out all the beds and furniture and just torching it.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Yay, the first review! Liz DeJesus attended the Drollerie Press chat on Sunday and won a free copy of The Fire Within. Her full review is here, but this was my favorite part:

I read this book in one sitting. I couldn’t stop reading it.

Thank you, Liz!

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Deena worked incredibly hard to get this fantastic cover. I love it! Please join us for a chat today at 4 PM Eastern here (link will be in the right-hand sidebar).

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Come chat today at Drollerie Press to celebrate the release of The Rose of Shanhasson and The Fire Within, 4 PM Eastern. The link to the chat room will be on this page.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I have the BEST FAMILY.

My beloved Sister, Papa from Mexico, Aunt BB and Uncle J came over today to help me celebrate the release of The Rose of Shanhasson. I made Settler’s Beans (with splenda brown sugar and drained all the fat off I could), Spinach Salad (with light sour cream and light mayonaise), potato salad (light mayonaise)—-and nobody noticed it was healthier than usual! We also had steak, delicious home-raised beef that Papa brought. I baked homemade bread and Aunt Molly brought cookies which I’m going to treat myself to one tonight.

We talked and talked and talked. We drank a couple of gallons of coffee. I had time for girl talk with BB and Molly and promised a trip to Sally’s Beauty Supply next Friday with BB and a trip this spring to introduce her to Papa’s horses. I forgot to tell Molly this, but I plan to come see her in Joplin too.

We topped the night off with a bottle of champagne and lots of wonderful words and support from three of my biggest fans: Papa, Molly and Aunt BB. I love you guys.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

You’ve seen parts of Rose before (originally titled BloodRose), but since it comes out this weekend from Drollerie Press, I thought I’d post a snippet that shows why I love Gregar so much.

Setup: This is the day after Rhaekhar defeated Shannari’s army. All is not sunshine and bunnies despite their first night together. In fact, he stalked out of the room thoroughly insulted and hasn’t seen her for hours. This discussion with his two best friends who are also Blood, or bodyguards, worsens his turmoil.

Varne is the nearest Blood, the first of the nine Blood and the last line of defense.

Gregar is the shadowed Blood who used to be a Death Rider, an assassin.

[translation notes, or check the Sha’Kae al’Dan dictionary]

Rhaekhar shaded his eyes against the rising sun and surveyed the green fields to the east and then the river to the southwest. “I

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Thirteen Things about The Rose of Shanhasson’s Journey to PublicationThe Rose of Shanhasson, the first book in my romantic fantasy trilogy, releases this weekend! Here’s the timeline of how that first dream came true. 1. Rose is the first story I ever wrote to “The End” in the fall of 2003. It weighed in at 525 pages, 124,000 words. I was dissatisfied with the epic fantasy (e.g. Jordan, Martin) and romantic fantasy I was reading that didn’t have enough romance for me. Rose is both epic fantasy and a love story. And yes, there is more sex than a typical romantic fantasy, but it is not strictly a romance either. 2. Its original title was very cheesy: My Beloved Barbarian. *cringe* 3. I entered that first version proudly in an RWA contest and was appalled at the judges’ thorough and (in the end) extremely helpful criticism. (No, the horse does not need its own POV (point of view), and I probably shouldn’t change POV every paragraph.) 4. I continued writing, including book 2 of the series, read a bunch of how-to books, read more fiction, and in the summer of 2004 I finished a second much improved version. 5. I entered that version in 3 contests and it finaled in all 3. One finalist judge requested a full and so Shannari, Rhaekhar, and Gregar took a ride to NY. 6. Where they were buried in a slush pile for three years… I finally formally withdrew the submission last year. 7. I continued writing other stories but always came back to this first beloved story. Something wasn’t quite right. I knew I could do better. Undertaking a third major revision pass was difficult, even gut-wrenching at times. I basically murdered the original heroine and created Shannari brand new. I axed all the cheesy stuff I could, tightened the prose, worsened the conflict, heaped emotional turmoil on my characters, and finally finished that third final version the beginning of 2007. 8. Feb. of last year I wrote Survive My Fire, which takes place in Keldar, a country connected to the Rose world but an entirely different culture. With dragons. 9. End of March, I saw a brand new publisher, Drollerie Press, specializing in mythic fiction, fairy tales, cross genre work. The lovely artwork on the site immediately drew my attention. Totally up my alley! So I sent the novella, SMF, first. 10. April 11, 2007 I had my first sale! 11. Deena asked to see more of my work, so I sent MBB retitled as BloodRose. 12. By May, that old beloved story had also been accepted at Drollerie, retitled to The Rose of Shanhasson (much more epic in flavor, I think). 13. I bawled, called my beloved sister, and bawled some more. We’re bringing out the champagne this weekend when The Rose of Shanhasson releases!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here! The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I can’t say enough good things about this book. I also bought The Artist’s Way because I loved the first book so much. I even bought a nice journal at B&N over the weekend and I started using it this week to get my Morning Pages.

I’d heard of Morning Pages before but hadn’t bought into the idea. I get up D&E to write as it is — I wasn’t too excited about the prospect of taking precious time to “brain dump” into a journal. However, as soon as I started doing it, some amazing things have come up, and I have a feeling it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I’m not very good at doing things for myself. I don’t think most Moms are. We’re so busy taking care of kids, working, cooking, folding laundry, homework… Then maybe 1 or 2 hours a day (if we get up at the butt crack of dawn before anyone else in the house is alive) we have a tiny bit of time to pursue our hobbies or dreams. Our families often resent even that much. To do something nice on top of that little bit of personal time seems… selfish. At least it does to me.

Working from home, I hardly ever go anywhere. Rarely by myself. I work. I take and pick up kids from school. I cook dinner and on bad nights, work around the bake time. I do homework with the kids after school and dinner. When the EDJ is really demanding, I work after that or after they go to bed. On a good night, we watch American Idol and I tinker with e-mail and might edit a section or two, but by then, I’m usually too tired to get many new words. (Plus the TV is on, which is really distracting, even when I hate the show That Man is watching.) Since I don’t have to go into the office, I never put on makeup. The only place I do go that I even have to “dress up” for is church, and I really don’t “dress” up either (our church is pretty casual).

When was the last time I did something for ME?

I realized last night that I hadn’t colored my hair since before Christmas. It takes too long. I had too much to do. Nobody really cares anyway, do they? Ah, but I care. I put on about 20 years of age when I don’t color my hair, if not more. So I dumped the dye on my head and then read The Artist’s Way while waiting for it to soak in. Another shocker: I haven’t had a hair cut since Sept of last year. *boggles* That was when I went to the home office. So that’s the next thing on the Taking Care of Me list to accomplish before this weekend.

And I’m going to plan a small outing for just me. No kids. No That Man. I have no idea what I’ll do yet, but I’m going to do SOMETHING.